


the more things stay the same

by Faebreath



Category: The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Genre: 5+1 Things, Assassination Attempt(s), Beshelar is a softie, Domestic Fluff, Hair Braiding, M/M, Serious Injuries, Vignettes, awkward colleagues to lovers, court rumours, formal/informal pronouns, new relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-23 17:44:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21324148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Faebreath/pseuds/Faebreath
Summary: Five things that changed when Cala and Beshelar became lovers - and one thing that didn't.
Relationships: Cala Athmaza/Deret Beshelar
Comments: 11
Kudos: 66





	the more things stay the same

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheCynicalSquid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCynicalSquid/gifts).

**i; new things in old rooms.**

The sleeping arrangements take some working out.

The first time Beshelar found himself in Cala’s bed (which is actually the second time he found himself in ‘Cala’s bed’, because the first time was on their tiny sofa) he got up straight afterwards, patting Cala’s shoulder awkwardly, and reaching for his smallclothes. 

“Where’rt _ going _?” Mumbled Cala, half-asleep and half into his pillow, reaching for Beshelar as if he were a stray blanket. “M’cold.”

“To _ bed _, maza,” said Beshelar, aiming for stern but landing closer to affectionate. 

“Hast a bed here,” said Cala, tugging him down. “A perfectly good bed.” Long arms wrapped themselves around Beshelar’s shoulders. “With me in it.” 

Beshelar made a grumbling noise, but Cala was curled so tightly around him that disentangling himself and seeking his proper bed would, he decided, be more trouble than it was worth.

The next time they ended up in Beshelar’s room, and Cala kicked and fidgeted and complained his blankets were too short. But he didn’t leave, either. 

So, for a while, they went between. But Cala said that it gave him unsettled dreams; and sometimes he didn’t know where he had put his glasses; and they might as well choose, anyway, since this didn’t appear to be a temporary state of affairs. (Beshelar had blushed at that last point, but could not argue with the logic.) And Beshelar gets twitchy when he sleeps without his weapons to hand, and they both agree that Cala’s room is filled with enough paraphernalia without adding firearms to the mix, so, in the end, Beshelar’s room becomes their room.

The next night, Cala came straight from brushing his teeth in the shared bathroom to the room with the narrow bed and swords mounted on the wall. Beshelar watched him put the dog-eared paperback he had been reading on the bedside table, spine up, folded out to keep his place. And it felt like something; it felt like a promise.

(Cala’s room keeps its bed, unused as it is. They tried to move the two together — _ you’ve got far more leg than is sensible, maza _ — but found they were fixed to the floor.

“Perhaps to prevent this very thing,” said Cala, smiling.

“Hmph,” said Beshelar, who Cala had let do most of the heavy lifting.)

(A few months into the arrangement, a pipe burst in Mer Aisava’s room, next door, and flooded it.

“We are perfectly able to sleep in the common room,” he had said, frowning, as Cala ushered him into his room — the spare room, really, although both nohecherai had decided not to mention that detail — but Cala just said “Nonsense,” and took his jacket.

Csevet was thanking them in his profuse, but not obsequious, Csevet way, when he turned to put down his things and saw the bed.

The bed that, since it no longer had Cala in it, had ended up being another shelf for Cala’s books; they sat in tottering piles, the bottom layers dusty and with the occasional note or stray page sticking out — and clearly unmoved for a long time.

Csevet turned to the two of them, eyebrows raised and grinning slightly and far too polite to say anything.

Beshelar turned scarlet and went to put on the kettle.)

**ii; something I have always wanted.**

Beshelar liked to be ready early, and he was already sitting on the edge of the bed, reading Telimezh’s reports, when Cala came back from the bathroom, still yawning, and began to pull on his uniform. He sensed, as he stretched out his legs to pull on his breeches, that his partner’s attentions were not entirely focused on lists of visitors to Edrehasivar VII; and, when he felt Beshelar shift to kneel behind him on the bed as he tied back his hair, half-turned his head in anticipation of a kiss. Instead — 

“Ouch!” It was surprise, more than actual pain, that made Cala jump as Beshelar yanked his half-formed braid apart. 

“Thy queue is an insult to court,” said Beshelar, as he began to reweave it. Cala had not thought someone could braid sternly, but, then, Beshelar was full of surprises. 

“Hast said so before,” Cala complained, “but hast never taken it into thine own hands.”

“Were’st not in the habit of getting dressed in my bedroom, maza.”

“Mm. I suppose not.” Cala leaned back into Beshelar’s hands; now that his hair was untangled, there was less pulling, and the soldier’s fingers were surprisingly gentle. “And it _ is _ thy responsibility, after all.”

“How so?”

“Why, ‘twas thee who mussed it so dreadfully.”

“Teasing fool,” he said, but Cala could hear the blush in the words, and could feel the fingers in his hair tremble very slightly. 

***

That night it came unbound again, also by Beshelar’s hands.

It was falling over them — his hands, Beshelar’s, that is, calloused from years of swordwork, trained in finding pressure-points and pressing the throats of enemies, but now so _ careful _ as they ran through Cala’s hair, long, ice-pale, and as untidy as it had been that morning. More, even.

“Hast undone thy hard work,” said Cala, smiling down at Beshelar from where he sat in the other’s lap. In truth, he was a little self-conscious; Beshelar had so far shown no distaste for his spindly limbs and scrawny frame, but his hair, wispy and perpetually sticking out in all the wrong directions, was something he could not imagine anyone finding attractive. 

“Then I will have to do it again,” said Beshelar; his fingers found the tip of Cala’s ear, and the maza let out a tiny _ ah _. 

“Thou promisest?

And Beshelar did, if not with words.

***

“I could get used to this,” sighed Cala, the next morning; this time had all the softness of touch of the first, but it was much improved by being naked in Beshelar’s arms. “Canst bathe me and dress me, too, if thou wishest.”

The hands in his hair stilled, and Cala, wondering if he had taken his teasing too far, turned to look at him; but found, rather than Beshelar glaring or opening his mouth to tell Cala off, Beshelar with eyes downturned and blushing more than he had ever seen him.

“I would braid thy hair every morning, Cala Athmaza,” he said, looking determinedly at the bedclothes, “if thou wishest.”

  


**iii; like a cloud, passing. **

It was nearing or just past midnight, and Csevet was nursing a steaming mug of tea, chair pulled close to the servant’s fireplace and with his fine velvet jacket draped over the back. 

He let out a long breath that was something between a yawn and a sigh, and let the knot in his forehead — the result of a long day of liasing with the Corazhas and trying to liaise with Csoru Drazharan — unwind itself. 

His own quarters were very comfortable, and had their own well-stocked fireplace; but, even as the Emperor’s personal secretary, he found he could not resist the warm hominess of the servant’s kitchen. _ ‘Tis the courier in me, I suppose _, he thought, with a tired smile. 

“Mer Aisava?” It was Isheian, white starched apron over one shoulder, hands red and slightly chapped from washing-water. Csevet, who had long since given up the battle to have her call him by his first name, smiled and drew back his chair to give her access to the fire. 

They sat for a while in companionable silence. Csevet was about to ask after her brother, who had just begun his first year at the Ath’mazare, when she blurted, “Mer Aisava, we — we would speak with you.”

“Of course,” said Csevet, not a little surprised; Isheian looked as nervous as the first day she had been asked to serve tea to the Emperor. 

She chewed her bottom lip for a moment, and then, “Do you know if Lieutentant Beshelar is ill?”

Csevet blinked. “Ill?” 

Isheian nodded, the set of her ears nervous but resolute. 

“No, we — we have heard nothing of the sort. Why?” Csevet looked at her sharply. “Have you heard anything amiss?”

“Not — not as such. It is only —” Isheian dropped her voice to close to a whisper, “yesterday we ran into him coming out of the breakfast room and dropped the tea things — and he said not to worry ourselves, and — and helped us pick everything up.”

“...And?”

“And,” Isheian said, as if she was delivering the news of a conspiracy to topple the Drazhadeise house, “he was _ smiling _.”

“Ah.” Csevet thought for a moment. “That is… unusual, we grant you, but Lieutenant Beshelar has been known to smile when,” he paused, and realised he had never actually seen Beshelar with a smile that wasn’t grim. “To smile on certain occasions. At any rate, we hardly think it is evidence of illness.”

She did not look convinced. “Mairan says she saw him taking with Mer Cala Athmaza after his shift, and he was _ laughing _.”

Well. That _ was _ strange, and Csevet could not deny it. “Regardless of Lieutenant Beshelar’s … newfound mirth, we do not see that there is any cause for concern — unless you have noticed any change in his ability to protect His Serenity?” He would have been surprised indeed if Isheian had noticed anything that had slipped past him.

Isheian looked unhappier than ever. “No,” she soldiered on, “but — Mairan says there are spells that — that can let a maza take the form of another, and fool those around them, and…” she trailed off, perhaps at Csevet’s expression.

“You think,” he said, slowly, “that Lieutenant Beshelar has been replaced by a conspirator?” A tiny nod from Isheian. “And that this has thus far escaped Cala Athmaza’s notice?” Another nod, although less certain than the first. “And you think this because he has been smiling?”

“And laughing,” said Isheian. 

Csevet managed to stop _ himself _ from laughing, but it was a near thing. “We thank you for bringing this to our attention,” he said, “and we will bear it in mind. But — we do not think there is anything to worry about at present. And we would advise taking Mairan’s tales with a generous pinch of salt.”

Isheian looked mortified, and got up to leave — but not before Csevet was able to stop her with a touch to her elbow. “The Emperor is lucky,” he said, “to have you to look out so diligently for him.”

Her blush deepened, but this time out of pleasure, and she scurried off with a last “Goodnight, Mer Aisava.”

When he heard the door click, Csevet stretched out his legs, balancing his feet on Isheian’s now-empty chair with an amused shake of the head. As he finished his tea, he allowed himself to consider her words; they were unusual enough, after all. _ Laughing with Cala Athmaza _ , he thought, and then — _ ah _. 

As Csevet Aisava burst out laughing, startling an old cat out of a doze and into the pantry, he resolved to watch his Emperor’s nohecharei more carefully. Lieutenant Deret Beshelar, head-over-heels in love; now _ that _ was something worth seeing.

(Servants talk, of course, and many less discreetly that Isheian; and Deret Beshelar, prim and proper as he is, cannot hide the way his eyes soften when he looks at one Cala Athmaza. So Csevet scolds his little herd of secretaries and couriers when he hears the whispers, and he and Esaran have what amounts to a war meeting, and she does the same. 

They don’t talk of it again outside of the language of eyebrows and ears, except once, when Csevet says, “Thou wert wrong, incidentally.”

“Oh?”

“Cala Athmaza is that much more cheerful that it was hard to tell,” he said. “But I have had my eye on him, and I believe him to be as moonstruck as our Lieutenant, in sooth.”

She snorted. 

But she made a point to look, and, after a month, could not deny it: whenever Lieutenant Beshelar let the tiniest smile slip, Cala Athmaza was turned to him, drinking it up, as a flower drinks up a rare and warming ray of sun.)

  
  
**iv; one hundred thousand tiny things.**

Beshelar learns to enjoy a cup of herbal tea, of an evening. Rose and jasmine and hibiscus: floral and with pale, jewel-like colours, flavours that he would have been ribbed for enjoying back in the barracks, but that Cala makes for him after a long shift and pours into beautiful, chipped, mismatched china cups. And it tastes lovely.

***

Beshelar still insists on their training sessions together, once a week; but now, when he succeeds in knocking Cala off-balance and offers him a hand, Cala turns the wrist to his lips, and kisses it. 

***

They still argue. If anything, they argue more, because — well. More complicating factors. Sometimes about important things, sometimes about small things, but Cala always teases him, laughs it off, goes in for a kiss to smooth it over. 

One day Beshelar stops him with a finger to his lips.

“Be serious about this, Cala Athmaza,” he says; and Cala is about to turn that into a joke, too, until he realises that Beshelar’s ears are trembling in a way he has never seen before.

_ Be serious about me, _ he is saying. _ Be serious about us. _

And Cala is. 

***

At first, Beshelar tries to stem the tide of half-read books, jars of everything from spices to cyanide, quill-pens, trinkets, _ et cetera _, from overflowing into his room from Cala’s. 

“How can someone take a vow of poverty and have so many _ things _?” He asks, trying to find his spare riding boots under a pile of romance novels. 

Just the next week, though, he passes a market stall in Cetho and sees a tiny bird made of blue crystal, the same colour as Cala’s eyes. And he thinks about it for a week. And so he buys it, and it sits on top of his reports and Cala’s half-written poetry.

***

Neither of them had been one for cooking; it was hard to justify making any effort in their cramped little kitchen for oneself, when there were so few hours in the day. But they grow to treasure it: an hour each night, perhaps, when they can do things for each other, and talk idly, and let their hands brush over each other. They were not either of them Ebremis, but both would rather be at that scored kitchen table than eating at the Emperor’s right hand. 

One night Cala puts down a bowl of sweet potato stew — that week’s leftovers, but still good — and looks at Beshelar as he scoops up a mouthful with a chunk of bread. 

“Dost ever wish,” he says, looking down at his long, bony fingers, “that we were — were a guard and a scholar, maybe, and we lived in a little house in Cetho, with a dog and a cat and a patch of garden? Our own lives, to live as we wished?”

Beshelar opens his mouth to say _ no _, automatically; it was the correct answer for a nohecharis, and the one he would have given anyone else but Cala, and maybe even Cala, too, however many months ago.

“Sometimes,” he says. “Sometimes I do."  
  


**v; how I call to you.**

When the assassin took the shot, on a clear winter morning in Cetho where Maia was opening a university building — a pointless risk, Beshelar had said, but Maia had insisted — it was Cala who was standing half an inch closer to him, so it was Cala who covered his body with his own, and it was Cala who took the crossbow bolt meant for his heart in his side. 

First, of course, Beshelar said “Serenity!”

The second thing he said, though, as he pulled Maia under the glowering shadow of the building, was “Cala,” his voice breaking, and he kept saying it, again and again, in between shouting directions to the guard and warding off Mer Aisava and the Zhasan, “Cala,” until they had word that the culprit had been found, and it was all over.

“Cala, Cala,” he said, as he and Maia knelt in his partner’s blood; he was horribly still, and even paler than usual, and Beshelar was shaking him by the shoulder, even though he knew he shouldn’t.

***

Later, Cala had been bandaged up and put into a bed and was, apparently, going to be all right; but Beshelar was still in the same place, by his side. 

He looked up for the first time in several hours to see Maia, dressed as casually as was allowed and smiling tiredly, with Kiru and Telimezh in respectfully distant tow. He made to stand, perhaps even to salute (he was very tired), but Maia stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t thou darest.”

“Are you —”

“I’m _ fine _, Beshelar,” said Maia, adding, when he saw Beshelar’s frown, “these assassination attempts get easier with practice, I promise thee.”

Beshelar didn’t quite laugh, but his mouth quirked, and he didn’t protest when Maia drew up a rickety visitor’s chair. 

They sat for a while, in silence. Then Maia said, very quietly, looking at Beshelar looking at Cala, “Dost know, I never heard thee say his name before, like that.”

Beshelar didn’t say anything; but Maia saw his hand tremble where it lay, just barely touching Cala’s. And he covered it with his own.

**and one; a bond past even death.**

“I think he knows,” said Beshelar. He was changing the dressings on Cala’s side with professional care, although he did allow his thumb to brush over the soft outline of a rib.

“Who?”

“Edrehasivar, obviously.” Cala winced as antiseptic ointment touched new skin. “Keep still.”

“Brute.” He leant forward to cup Beshelar’s jaw, even as he tried to keep him still. “Art worried?”

Beshelar made a noncommittal noise and turned away to find fresh bandages.

“All will be well,” said Cala, smiling, but Beshelar didn’t look up from his work.

“Deret.”

“You’re to let me take the first shift, tonight.”

“Deret. Look at me.” 

He did, but he didn’t meet Cala’s eyes, and his ears were low. 

“Have faith in him.”

“I —”

“Have faith in him,” said Cala, again, simply.

Beshelar blew out a breath. “Very well,” he said, in the same way he’d said _ nor I _to Maia. He dropped the hem of Cala’s tunic over the bandages. “Get thy boots on, then.”

“Aye aye, Lieutenant.”

It was Cala’s first shift after the incident — as Mer Aisava called it — and many servants and secretaries nodded to him as they passed, giving him brief greetings of relief and admiration. He thought Nemer, coming down a hallway with a Maia’s second-warmest robe, might actually have embraced him, if his hands hadn’t been full.

Kiru’s look was less approving. “You’re too pale.”

“Go to _ bed _, Kiru.”

The second nohecharo bristled, like a hen fluffing out her feathers. “We are perfectly fit —”

“How many hours ago did you sleep?”

“No more than thirty.”

“Thirty-six, actually,” said Telimezh, emerging from the doorway and dodging Kiru’s glare like a physical blow. Kiru looked even less pleased, but blushed very slightly, and allowed Cala to shrug on the baldric of the First Maza and start his shift. 

***

Maia smiled at him with a glowing warmth when Cala took his place by the side of his desk; but he said nothing apart from his usual greeting until the evening, when even Csevet had bowed and left. 

He put his pen down, and then, with the same deliberate care, “I am sorry.”

Beshelar made a scandalised sound, and Cala said “Serenity?”

Maia held up a hand. “No, let me say this. I _ am _sorry.”

Beshelar opened his mouth and shut it again. Maia continued, “I am sorry, that…” he had started with his ears set in determination, but now they faltered, as if he had already ran out of words. “That things have to be like this, for you.” The plural. 

There was a long pause. The words had been vague, and the Emperor’s eyebrows were furrowed in dissatisfaction; but there had been enough meaning in them for everyone in the room to blush. Cala looked at Beshelar out of the corner of his eye, and saw that he was struggling between his sudden interest in the Tortoise Room’s patterned carpet and the duty of a nohecharis to meet his Emperor’s gaze. 

_ I love thee, my shy soldier, _thought Cala, and, in the shifting firelight of the room, something seemed to click into place in his mind. He looked at Beshelar, and Beshelar looked back at him; and when he spoke next, it was in the plural, too.

“Serenity,” he said, beaming, “it is our job.”

**Author's Note:**

> Pure self-indulgence to get me out of writer's block -- chapter 2 of Chiaroscuro is coming, I promise ^^;
> 
> Still trying to work out informal English, so let me know if I've made any mistakes!


End file.
